Was the Uzumaki Clan strong back in the day? Aoba wasn't sure. After all, they had lost, and by the looks of it, they had lost miserably.
However, it didn't sit right with him that a major ninja clan, skilled in sealing techniques and even having ventured so far into forbidden soul arts, didn't leave behind any significant countermeasures or make the ninja alliance pay a heavy price. It seemed suspicious.
Thus, Aoba's deduction that Uzumaki survivors might still exist made sense.
Until now, it was all speculation, until he received Jiraiya's distress signal.
Even though the Shinobi World was undergoing a great transformation, and overall power levels had risen considerably, the real improvements were largely limited to Konoha. The rest of the Shinobi World didn't have chakra cloaks, nor did they have Konoha's boldness to openly share vast amounts of ninjutsu knowledge with their lower-ranked ninja.
So, theoretically, outside of Konoha, there weren't many forces that could pose a real threat to Jiraiya.
The fact that he was sending an emergency distress signal meant he had encountered an irresistible danger.
"Irresistible", this immediately piqued Aoba's interest. Because when he thought about what could overpower Jiraiya, only two possibilities came to mind... Firstly, the hidden remnants of Kara, a force centered around Isshiki, an opponent completely beyond Jiraiya's ability to handle. Secondly, it meant Jiraiya had likely found the Uzumaki survivors Aoba had theorized about.
After all, Aoba had granted him the Authority of Luck. As long as the target existed in the Shinobi World, Jiraiya was bound to encounter it eventually.
On the other side, Jiraiya had already been fleeing for three days.
At first, although he realized he couldn't fight them head-on, he didn't think he wouldn't be able to escape.
After all, when Aoba had assigned him the mission, he'd been loaded with equipment, various ninja tools, sealing scrolls, and a chakra cloak.
With that setup, Jiraiya could have easily fought Pain's Six Paths from the original story without falling behind. But his enemies' methods had far exceeded his expectations.
Initially, after disengaging from battle, Jiraiya immediately set traps, hoping to capture one of them and learn more about the village.
But he failed.
No matter what kind of trap he set, they detected it in advance. Jiraiya quickly realized that they possessed some powerful sensing ability, or a formidable ninjutsu.
Most likely, it was the legendary Kagura's Mind Eye.
After his traps failed, Jiraiya tried facing them at his strongest. Seizing an opportunity, he entered Sage Mode, boosted by the chakra cloak's enhancements. In this state, Jiraiya could have easily overwhelmed the original Six Paths of Pain.
But the pursuers kept growing in number. Nine ninja without any forehead protectors eventually caught up to him.
Among them, three used the Eight Trigrams Seal, and three others unleashed the Adamantine Sealing Chains.
With these signature Uzumaki Clan techniques in play, Jiraiya finally confirmed that the Uzumaki survivors truly existed. And they were very different from the Uzumaki Clan of the past.
They were stronger, more aggressive, and their sealing arts had changed. Jiraiya clearly felt that mobilizing natural energy had become extremely difficult.
He had never heard of the Eight Trigrams Seal or Adamantine Chains being able to restrict natural energy. Yet these people had done it.
Jiraiya knew he should have immediately fled without looking back. In that case, he might have had a chance.
The enemy was powerful, well-coordinated, but they didn't have as much combat experience as he expected. He wasn't entirely without hope. But his instincts as a ninja drove him to gather intel, so he chose to turn and engage.
One reason was to verify whether these people truly were Uzumaki survivors; the other was to probe for more information.
Thus, Jiraiya fell into a death trap he could have avoided.
Truthfully, Jiraiya wasn't afraid of dying.
After the prophecy he had devoted his life to collapsed, and after the woman he loved ended up with Aoba Kamikawa, he had already lost much of his reason to live.
As a traditional ninja, dying gloriously in battle was a destiny he had long embraced.
However, during the fight, Jiraiya touched a small scroll, Aoba's emergency beacon.
Even though he had no chakra left to use the Flying Thunder God technique, Aoba, as a god, had also mastered part of the laws of space.
As for why only "part" of the law and not all of it, that wasn't because Aoba was weak. It was simply because the gods of the Shinobi World had been born too recently. A few thousand years wasn't nearly enough to accumulate deep foundations.
The gods who governed concepts like space and time had only grasped a sliver of their respective laws. Thus, when Aoba absorbed their authorities, his control was likewise limited.
Truly mastering a law required an extremely long time to build up authority bit by bit. If those ancient gods had fully mastered a law, Kaguya and Isshiki would have been squashed like bugs when they descended on the Shinobi World, there wouldn't have been a story left.
Had Aoba absorbed power of that level, forget the Pure Land, Konoha would already have opened a university on the Ōtsutsuki's homeworld.
Right now, Aoba could teleport freely across the Shinobi World as long as he had a coordinate. But he couldn't bring others with him directly.
If he needed to transport people, he could open a stable space gate and let others walk through it, similar to the portal magic in Marvel movies.
In that sense, transporting large numbers of people was still inferior to the Fourth Hokage's Flying Thunder God. With enough chakra, Minato could instantly teleport hundreds or even thousands of people, even move a Tailed Beast Bomb mid-air.
Aoba's method would require people to pass through one by one.
He could create a giant teleportation gate capable of transporting many people at once, but it would consume his divine source power, something gods usually avoided doing casually.
To put it simply: Minato's Flying Thunder God forcibly "jumps" through space like breaking through a window using chakra, while Aoba uses a "key" to open the door properly.
Breaking windows is exhausting and risky. Doing it too much wears you out. But opening a door with a key is effortless, you can open as many times as you like without issue.
That's the difference between having authority and not having authority.
Furthermore, the Flying Thunder God could only "jump" through space. Being a sneaky jump, there wasn't room for extra maneuvers.
But with his space authority, Aoba could do so much more. For example, he could attack with space itself, slice out a spatial rift to use as a blade. Even the Truth-Seeking Orbs would shatter on contact. Cutting a Tailed Beast Bomb in half would be no problem.
He could also create his own independent pocket dimension, like the storage rings you find in cultivation novels.
At the moment, the pocket dimension was only about the size of his body. But in actual combat, it was already a god-tier ability.
Because he possessed so many authorities, Aoba was still continually developing them. The potential uses of a god's authorities far exceeded what could be measured by simple numbers.
In a single thought, Aoba appeared near Jiraiya.
If you would like to read more...
The novel has be completed (Chp. 362) on the patreon -> SaintXI